Asylum under Rudd: tough, or just shonky? - Labor is being tougher and more ruthless with asylum seekers than the Howard Government, according to an analysis of decisions made by Immigration Minister Chris Evans, where he rejected 97.6% of intervention applications since coming to power.

Rudd re-opens Derby's Curtin detention hell - With an election looming, Kevin Rudd becomes Howard-lite and his henchman all at once: the memory of the Curtin detention centre awakens fears of torture, vilification, being beaten up by guards and locked in grave isolation compounds.

World Outrage about Kevin Rudd's Big Asylum Freeze - From psychiatrist Jon Juredini to Malcolm Fraser, from human rights lawyer Greg Barns to Andrew Bartlett, outrage swelled fast around Kevin Rudd's processing freeze of Sri Lankan and Afghan asylum seekers, and it went international within a week.

Labor chooses John Howard's Excision Zone - 'Refugee advocates have accused the Federal Government of abandoning its softer approach to asylum seekers.' An expose of Labor's ambivalence about John Howard's shocking refugee exclusion zone and its sneaky choice.

Coal Industry overheats Kevin's Climate - Anna Rose at the 2020 Summit: I found myself in the climate stream with representatives of coal mining companies including Xstrata and Shell, yet not a single person from an environment NGO such as Greenpeace ...

The ALP's me-too refugee policy - Just before the election, Kevin Rudd tells the ABC's 7.30 Report presenter Kerry O'Brien that he's prepared to turn boats back to Indonesia, a policy brazenly in contravention with Australia's obligations under the UN Refugee Convention.

The 2010 Anti-Smuggling Legislation - Do we want to punish smugglers, or secretly close our borders? See Project SafeCom's Senate Submission and share our doubts about this brazen law proposal that would land even Tampa Captain Arne Rinnan in jail as a smuggler.

The unthrown kids - All the photographs of the "children overboard" incident in 2001 - leaked to Project SafeCom after the incident: they show gratefulness. They show fathers who are tired, but moved. They show mothers who smile, in deep love for their children and thankfulness for the rescue...

Hadi Ahmadi: Smuggler or Escape Organiser? - Perhaps it is true that, contrary to what happens on the European smuggling routes and strategies, Australian 'smugglers' cannot and should not be called 'smugglers', because they simply bring refugees home to UN safety in Australia.

Alcatraz Down Under: Christmas Island - The monstrosity is complete. Like a gigantic scar cutting through the pristine wilderness, the Christmas Island detention centre blights not just the hillside of the island, but also the Australian psyche. We now have our own prison island.

PEN Australia:

"PEN is one of many organizations Australia wide who support and lobby for the rights of asylum seekers."

"These include groups such as Rural Australians for Refugees, city based Asylum Seeker Resource Centres, Melbourne's Hotham mission, Brisbane's Romero centre, the Sydney-based Edmund Rice Centre and Chilout, Adelaide's Circles of Friends, Perth's Project SafeCom, the Fitzroy Learning Network, and the Victorian Foundation for the Survivors of Torture, among many others."

Related pages:

21 January 2005: Ardeshir Gholipour: how we torture a distinguished Iranian - It really is astounding that Ardeshir Gholipour has spent the last five years in an Australian detention centre. He's been left to dry in Australian detention centres since 1999; he's been in the Port Hedland detention centre and now he's in Baxter.

8 November 2004: Tony Kevin: "Another Country: Writing from Exile" - Many of the people I have tried to engage with the SIEV X story over the past two years may have felt like Coleridge's wedding guest being importuned by The Ancient Mariner. They didn't want to hear but, fascinated in spite of themselves, they were unwillingly forced to...

:::RAFFLE::: 21 June 2004: 2004 World Refugee Day Raffle: Another Country, Sydney PEN's Refugee Anthology - Sydney PEN's anthology of refugee writing, Another Country, was launched by Australian actor Claudia Karvan on May 16 2004 at Gleebooks. Just one hundred copies of the Special Edition, signed by Rosie Scott and Tom Keneally, were issued, and we have one of FOUR for you. Page is still worth looking at, even while it closed on 30 June 2004: it includes a Sydney Morning Herald editorial and a good article by Sharon Verghis about the book.

Fighting for writers in Australian detention

About the author: Arnold Zable is Melbourne PEN centre's spokesperson on refugees and writers held in Australian detention. His most recent novel Scraps of Heaven depicts the traumas of refugees of an earlier generation.

On Monday, 29 November, Sarath Amarasinghe, a forty-two year old Sri Lankan businessman and journalist who has been in Australian detention for almost three years, joined fellow Sri Lankan inmates in Baxter Detention Centre on a hunger strike. They were desperate to have their cases reopened after years of indefinite imprisonment.

Sarath says he fled Sri Lanka after receiving death threats connected with his membership of the opposition United National Party. Although this party eventually came to power, it did so in collaboration with elements of the original ruling party he opposed. With his latest application for a visa having just been refused, Amarasinghe remains convinced his life is in danger should he return.

While in detention, Amarasinghe has produced thirteen editions of a newsletter called Baxter News. The publication is a voice for inmates critical of inhumane conditions in detention, and includes articles documenting detainee hardships and abuse. The Baxter News is an extraordinary feat of courage given the hostile conditions in which it is produced.

As a result of his writings in detention, Amarasinghe was able to become a member of Sydney PEN. When Amarasinghe announced his intention to join the Baxter hunger strike, Australian centres of International PEN released statements of both their support, and concern about the consequences of the strike on the health of participating detainees. Sydney PEN's Rosie Scott, Denise Leith and Thomas Keneally fasted in empathy with the strikers outside the Department of Immigration on Thursday evening, 1 December, whilst other members joined them in a vigil. PEN centres in other states publicised their actions with media releases and opinion pieces.

In 2002, Ivory Coast journalist, Cheikh Kone became International PEN's first major Australian Writer in Prison case when he was defined as a 'writer at risk.' Until then, Australia had been one of the few countries that had never been listed in the booklet

These efforts highlight the work of Australian PEN centres on behalf of detained asylum seekers in recent years. International PEN was founded in London in 1921 to represent the interests of writers worldwide. In 1960, it set up a 'Writers in Prison Committee', in response to mounting concerns about attempts to silence writers in many countries. Every six months it produces a booklet that documents the cases of writers who have been threatened, imprisoned, tortured, beaten, exiled, or assassinated for their contrary views.

In 2002, Ivory Coast journalist, Cheikh Kone became International PEN's first major Australian Writer in Prison case when he was defined as a 'writer at risk.' Until then, Australia had been one of the few countries that had never been listed in the booklet.

Kone's case was brought to light by Melbourne schoolteacher Peter Job who first made contact with him in February 2002, when a refugee advocacy group organized a letter writing campaign to inmates in Australia's isolated detention centres. Job's correspondent, 'Detainee number, NBP451', turned out to be Cheikh Kone. He had been imprisoned in the Port Hedland Centre since January 2001. Job sent an outline of his case to International PEN's Melbourne Centre, and the information was forwarded to London for investigation.

In the late 1990s, Kone had worked as a journalist for the Ivory Coast newspaper, Le Patriote. He was first arrested in 1997 after writing an article criticizing the country's electoral system. He was detained for three months, interrogated, regularly beaten, and released without any charges being laid.

In December 1999, the Ivory Coast government was overthrown by the military. When elections were held in October 2000, the opposition RDR party was banned from taking part. The military ruler General Guehi declared himself the winner and, in response to a request from the editor of Le Patriote, Kone wrote an article that asserted the election results were rigged. He gave the article to the editor, but it was never published. Within hours of handing it in, Kone was warned by family members and friends that the military were looking for him.

He was hidden in a jeep, and driven, at 3 am, to the Ghanain border. He continued his escape via Togo to Benin, and by boat to Durban in South Africa. Six weeks later he stowed away on a container ship under a Panamanian flag. After the ship arrived in Fremantle on 18 January 2001, Kone was questioned by Immigration officials and eventually transferred by plane to the Port Hedland Detention Centre. His applications for refugee status were subsequently rejected at all levels, including the Federal Court of Australia.

It took just one phone call by Dixe Wills of International PEN's London office, to Patrice Guehi, publisher of Le Patriote, to finally establish that Kone had indeed worked for that newspaper. Guehi also confirmed that Kone had fled the country after suffering persecution. He was eventually released from Port Hedland on 29 July 2003, but not without incurring an Australian Government bill of $89,000 for his accommodation.

Kone's case was the first of several adopted by Australian PEN Centres. Others have included Iraqi doctor Aamer Sultan and Cambodian journalist Lam Khy Try. Dr Sultan courageously supported fellow inmates in Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre, and published several ground breaking medical papers and eye witness accounts of the severe traumas suffered by detained asylum seekers, particularly children.

Rosie Scott met Lan Khy Try in Villawood Detention Centre. Try had fled Cambodia after receiving death threats for a series of articles exposing government corruption, and illegal logging. In a statement written for Sydney PEN in November 2003, Try wrote: 'I was followed and I was fearful. After the director of our newspaper died in suspicious circumstances, all of the newspaper staff were afraid and the newspaper was closed. My family and I went into hiding.'

As a child, Try was taken from his mother by the Khmer Rouge to work in the fields. His mother's family was killed. In his statement, Try said that as a journalist in post Khmer Rouge Cambodia he was angry at continued corruption and killings, and 'wanted to write about it.' In doing so, he discovered that his country was 'still very dangerous for journalists who talk about the government.'

Try and his wife were eventually released to France in early 2004, with the help of a number of International agencies, and representations by both Sydney PEN, and the chair of International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee, Eugene Schoulgin.

Most recently, Australian PEN has been alerted to the case of Iranian writer, journalist and political activist, Ardeshir Gholipour who has been in Australian immigration detention since May 2000. Ardeshir says he was involved in the Freedom Movement of Iran from 1985 onwards, and the Left Union for Democracy in Iran since 1994. In 1987 he was imprisoned for twenty one months for distributing material on behalf of the Freedom Movement. Ardeshir continued to write for a number of Iranian publications until he fled the country in March 2000, in fear of his life. After three and a half years of Australian detention he remains an inmate in Baxter. He has continued to write, especially letters of support for other detainees, alerting people in the community to their plight. Ardeshir has also taken up art, and he painted numerous wall murals while previously detained in Port Hedland.

Another major initiative of Australian PEN was a collection of writings, many of which were produced by asylum seekers held in detention. Edited by Rosie Scott and Thomas Keneally, the anthology, Another Country, includes journalism, fiction, oral testimony, drama, cartoons and diary entries. Originally published in a recent edition of Southerly, and due out in an expanded edition next year, the dominant form is poetry, a reflection of the fact that many of the inmates come from Middle Eastern societies with cherished poetic traditions.

Both Cheikh Kone and Sarath Amarasinghe contributed to the anthology, the latter with his poignant poem Faith in Kids. Iranian poet, Tony Zandavar who, until his recent release had spent over five years in Port Hedland and Baxter, writes, in his poem Expectation: 'Instead of a small cage, the great men have made a great cage and called it detention/ Instead of a small bird, the great men have placed miserable human beings behind bars.' In Zandavar's words, Australia's detention centres are places where you 'can cry gently, noiselessly'.

Iranian poet, Mohsen Soltany Zand, who spent over four years in Port Hedland and Villawood centres, reflects the despair of fellow inmates when he writes: 'I can see freedom, the red of nature's sunset/and God on a sharp razor.' Iraqi inmate, Khalid Al Sharifi writes: 'Rain falls and the sunlights the earth/We didn't come from another planet/We have our own deserved place on earth/We didn't cross the ocean to live in prison.' Fourteen year-old Mina cries out in the pages of her Woomera diary: 'Oh, God help us, help everyone.'

Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Perth PEN centres continue to support detained asylum seekers-come-writers in various forums, including PEN sponsored writers' festival panels, special evenings of refugee readings, local advocacy, and through representations by International PEN when asylum seekers are seen to be at risk for their writing. As a result it has been short-listed for the HREOC Human Rights award for community organizations.

PEN is one of many organizations Australia wide who support and lobby for the rights of asylum seekers. These include groups such as Rural Australians for Refugees, city based Asylum Seeker Resource Centres, Melbourne's Hotham mission, Brisbane's Romero centre, the Sydney-based Edmund Rice Centre and Chilout, Adelaide's Circles of Friends, Perth's Project SafeCom, the Fitzroy Learning Network, and the Victorian Foundation for the Survivors of Torture, among many others.

These groups have provided support at a time when asylum seekers and refugees have been cruelly misrepresented by the nation's political leaders, and either detained, or left in limbo on temporary protection visas. They have helped humanise their plight when they have been demonised, and have provided material assistance and moral support, when they have been abandoned or left destitute. They are a saving grace in hostile times.